


fierce, dangerous and beautiful

by pinetreelady



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:03:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1920780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinetreelady/pseuds/pinetreelady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Derek might be feeling about Braeden in episode 4.03 "Muted"</p>
            </blockquote>





	fierce, dangerous and beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> For [elisera](http://archiveofourown.org/users/elisera), whose Braeden/Derek feels are contagious
> 
> (I feel the need to quote [helenish](http://helenish.tumblr.com/post/91112361994/teen-wolf-bullying-psa) here: "Look, I’m not going to stop writing stories where Derek Hale and Stiles Stilinski are the soul’s recognition of its counterpoint in another, but does that mean I somehow can’t enjoy watching them bone down with women/girls who make them smile, sometimes in spite of themselves? Noooooooooope.")

Derek knows he has a type. The people he gets involved with tend toward the fierce, dangerous, and beautiful. Sometimes one of those qualities manifests before the others, in the course of attraction, but they’re … always there, one way or another.

This time he feels like he's being hit with all those qualities at once. Plus a sharp, perceptive intelligence that would scare him, if he had space to consider it.

After the first time she'd freed him and Peter, Derek figured he'd never see Braeden again. She was breathtaking, and the look in her eyes as she gazed at him stuck with him for months. But his life was such a goddamn shit-show that it didn't even really matter. Even survival was looking slim. Plus, he'd been so out of it by the time she showed up, that, who knew, maybe he'd hallucinated how captivating she was.

But now.

Braeden struts back into his life, exchanges barbs with Peter, and watching her bait him leaves Derek smirking down at his hands in a way that he's sure she's not missing. He’s pretty sure she misses very little, and certainly not the way she amuses him, or how he can hardly take his eyes off her.

He’s helpless to the way she's fucking with him, right now. He’s standing with his back to her, reading through her somewhat-illegally acquired report, as she strips off the disguise that had earned her the information in the first place. His breath catches as he hears the whisper of fabric against skin, he turns enough to get a glimpse of curves and lace, and arousal shoots through him. Even when he turns fully, and she’s dressed, he knows that she’s well aware that she’s got him wrong-footed, distracted by her body, her cool confidence. It’s all he can do to fix his eyes to hers, to attempt to communicate intelligently about what’s of prime importance right now: tracking Kate.

It feels like she’s seeing through every barrier he’s put up, though, and he suspects she’s more right than even she knows, when she tells him she knows him, knows what he wants. He can’t trust her, though. It’s not in his nature to trust anyone easily, let alone someone who’s walking a very fine, dangerous line between hunter and wolf and … whatever Kate represents, now. 

It’s clear that Braeden knows more than she’s saying about the change in his eyes, but he’s too stubborn, too afraid of what it might reveal, to ask her to tell him. Too afraid of what he might see in her face, pity or fear, if he were to ask. Or perhaps she’d refuse to tell him at all, and mock his ignorance. None of it’s worth it. He resigns himself to not-knowing, to waiting, perhaps futilely, for an answer. 

It’s all he can do to toss her the gun, to tell her she has a week, biting back his desire to tell her to take care, to be safe. Knows it would reveal more than he already has.

He can’t help but let his eyes linger on her retreating figure, hoping that maybe, this time, she’ll come back sooner than before.


End file.
